goblinbox

In which there’s, um. Psssh. Yeah. Whatever. Gah.

1.) Kid behind the counter: I know you look at me and see an ol’ lady, but seriously. I’m capable of irony. Hell, I’ve done your stupid shitty job and tons more just like it. Don’t roll your eyes at me, punk, when I smile at you after some conehead customer does something stupid, because I could totally beat up your mom.

2.) My hair is now about 20% gray. WTF, over?

3.) In my WordPress installation, on the Add New Post page, is a Categories window. It doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked for years. The only way I can edit or add categories is to go to a whole ‘nother part of the interface, which I don’t, which is why my categories suck. I’ve never been able to figure out how to fix it.

4.) There’s this website called freelancer.com. I spent an hour this morning looking at the jobs posted. My observations:

• You can get a part-time virtual assistant with pretty much my entire skillset for $200 per month. That person will live in India, and that $200 will probably go much farther there than it does here.
• There are persons or companies out there who need teams of ten or more to type CAPTCHA entries. I can’t for the life of me figure out why, unless they’re using cheap human labor to open doors for irritating fucking ‘bots. The pay is $.70 per thousand CAPTCHAs entered.
• There’s a huge market for “writers,” where “writers” equals “people who bang out enthusiastic three hundred-word articles about meaningless crap and get paid $1.50 to $3.00 per piece.”

Apparently if I wanna work in this world, I need to get new skills or move to India.

5.) I painted my nails red yesterday.

6. I have no idea if starting my EB while they were still debating EUC has fucked up my school plans or not. I have still not been awarded any financial aid, but they don’t even mail the stuff until August 20th.

7.) I sleep much too much.

8.) I cleaned my room and did my laundry, but I need to vacuum.

In which I wanna post but don’t really have anything to say and am doing it anyway!

The latest WordPress upgrade looks nice! I’ll have to upgrade my dad’s installation this weekend.

I’m using a new template. I like it. Do you like it?

Amazon is pissing me off. It’s been three days and they haven’t answered my question about why their custom software DOESN’T FUCKING WORK.

This was my breakfast:

The onion festival is this weekend; I’ll be going to see Vaughn Jensen play Land Title tonight with Becca ’cause it’s her birthday.

I have fewer than three dollars to my name.

I called about my extended benefits; they had me leave a message and said I’d get a call back in two days.

I need to wash my hair more than all of you put together.

I’m spending tons of online time here and here.

Update: I finally decided to RTFM and the Amazon software works fine, I just need to feed it UPCs I don’t have. Bleggh.

In which we use an AI to analyze my writing.

I went to genderanalyzer.com and typed in my URL and clicked the Analyze button and waited patiently. It said, “We think http://goblinbox.com is written by a woman (67%).”

Only sixty-seven percent?

Hmm.

In which I think “artisanal” is a wholly silly word.

Once upon a time, everybody made their own breads and cheeses (or at least personally knew the person who made the breads and cheeses they ate), and I imagine these products were earthy and rustic and “artisanal” and at least edible if not actually delicious. Yay.

Then came the Industrial Revolution and specialization and factories, and cheap, plentiful, uniform breads and cheeses came to be, and there was much rejoicing because making bread every goddamned week probably got really old and anyone who has ever been around homemade cheese-making knows it’s totally smelly and that’s even when you don’t actually own the cows and/or goats the milk came from.

Today when I walked from work down to the post office to see if I’d gotten anything interesting in the mail I passed all these cute little stores packed with “artisanal” breads and cheeses and salamis and olives and things, and it struck me as being kinda funny that we now go out of our way to buy bumpy, floury, expensive, stinky foods, and that it’s a sign of affluence to have the time and money to be able to pay top dollar for the fruits of peasants’ labor.

It may be that our great-great-great grandmothers wish they could reincorporate just long enough to smack us upside our trendy little heads.

In which there are two lists. And pictures. And a lot of colons. I love using colons.

These are the things I DID NOT do over the weekend:

Get laid, get wasted, have an epiphany, knit, buy a bike, eat Mexican food, do yoga.

These are the things I DID do over the weekend:

Friday, I went to a thing out near the airport, and heard some music:

Saturday, I made this purple wrap:

It was based on a thing I saw on Etsy, and I made it without a pattern ’cause I’m clever like that. It took a looooong time because I would pin it together, put it on, look at it, take it off, cut it, pin it together, put it back on, and look at it over and over.

I made and ate this delicious Indian food:

Sambar, for the record? Is freakin’ nommability squared.

Sunday: I napped, watched three episodes of Mad Men on DVD, and packed a bento. (Seriously. That’s all I did in a whole entire day. You may confer upon me now the Laziest Girl Evar! award, because I totally done did earned it!)

In which I write a timecapsule missive to my younger self.

Hey, dingbat, remember when you were twenty-something and you saw that disgusting old man in his driveway caring lovingly for his hot little convertable, and you wondered how he could possibly be unaware of how painfully stupid he looked?

Remember how you assumed he had to be aware since he was at least twice your own age, and you decided – because you were still young enough to believe that an adult was a cleverer, more mature creature than you – that he was probably polishing his convertible with more irony than your young little head could possibly perceive?

Remember walking by, not looking at him, not looking at his car, and hoping that he wasn’t stealing inappropriately lusty glances at your hot little bod (because that would just be pathetic and gross) and thinking, That HAS to be irony, a fat old man in a sports car, because there’s just nothing at all attractive about an expensive little fuel-injected COCK EXTENSION in tandem with those jowls and that beer belly! Jesus! Ick!

~+~+~
I walked by that guy again today, eighteen years later.

He had his little red convertible in his driveway with the top down. He was hand-polishing it. It was a cute car, too expensive for a younger man to afford. I sincerely doubted that it was comfortable for him to drive, since the cabin was so small and the bucket seats so narrow. He’d probably lusted after it in the back of his mind for twenty-five years, and had just recently found himself in a position to afford it.

That “old man” is no longer so old to me. He’s essentially my contemporary. I mean, he’s still old and he’s still fat, don’t get me wrong, but not as much as he used to be. In fact, I probably would have been flattered if he’d eyed me, but he didn’t – he only had eyes for his car.

I know now that he never meant for his skin to sag, his waist to disappear, or his belly to stick out. Those things just happened while he was doing what he was supposed to do. For all we know he may have been toned and fine and healthy once, back when his self-image was originally formed. The way he looks now is not necessarily the result of unchecked gluttony after all.

He does what you do, you judgmental little twenty-something. He sleeps, eats, works, and plays. It’s just that he’s been doing it now for fifty years, and this is what he looks like.

He has the little hot rod because he’s been a good dad and and good husband and he’s always wanted it and it’s his turn to have something frivolous. He doesn’t enjoy his toy with irony; he enjoys it with the same innocence and entitlement that you enjoy glitter lip gloss. It makes him happy, and he’s proud of it because it is an expression of who he feels he is. He knows what he looks like, yes, but he also knows that inside he feels just like he did in college.The only difference is that now he can remember more days, and he doesn’t have as much stamina as he once did.

He still expects himself to look, feel, and move like he did when he was twenty-something, but he doesn’t and he knows that he doesn’t. He bought the car for himself, not because he thinks he’s going to win your twenty-something adoration with it. Of course he’d most likely bed you if you asked him to, but he doesn’t think the car will make you want him and that’s not why he bought it.

In fact, the car doesn’t have anything to do with you at all, or women in general. It’s just a cool toy he’s always wanted, and you’re really a nasty little bitch for thinking you’re all that or that you have any idea what the phrase “mid-life crisis” means or feels like.

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In which it’s a process.

Not everything has been moved nor is it all working yet. Patience, my babies. *smooch*

In which this site is moving.

There’s a server co-located in a data center somewhere in California, and it’s been acting weird.

Every bit of hardware in it has been replaced except for the hard drive itself, and it still hangs and needs to be rebooted at least once a day.

That server is the server goblinbox.com lives on. (And Chaos’ RV Blog, and gibblesnix.com, and beerafraid.com too, for that matter.)

It has been decided to replace the hard drive.

What this means is that goblinbox (and Chaos’ RV Blog, and gibblesnix.com, and beerafraid.com) will be down for a bit while everything is migrated from the old drive to the new one, and there may be some wonkiness while we get everything situated.

But never fear! It’ll all be fine soon. *mwah!*

In which I gig and consume media.

Friday night I waited for nearly an hour for my bro to finish an instance in WoW, then we went to Rosita’s for dinner. Mmm, chile rellenos!

I went to bed early Friday night because I was tired from going out Wednesday and Thursday.

Saturday I woke up at nine. It really pissed me off, so I went back to sleep until eleven. I got my nails done Saturday afternoon. (My nail tech lady told me my skin looked bad and that I needed to cut back on the caffeine and cigs and drink more water. I was all, ‘Uh, okay lady. Will do.’)

After my manicure I went to meet Lannie and Becca at the bar. Not long after arriving I got a call from RB. He said, “Wanna make fifty bucks?” Of course I did!

I drove out to Basel Cellars and sat in with the Coyote Kings, who were playing for a wedding reception. The food was good, the wine was free, and at the end of the night one of the caterers gave me an entire cheesecake.

Fifty bucks and a cheesecake for singing nine songs? Good deal!

Sunday I laid around like a slug. I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on Netflix. (Such a great movie! I’d never seen it before. Loved it.) I repainted my nails because I just couldn’t hack the very whorish dark color I’d chosen at the salon.

I finished reading Ghost Sunday night, even though the book pissed me off endlessly. I realize it’s fiction and therefore fantasy, but Jesus H Christ! I do NOT like gang rape, torture, and murder so graphically portrayed in my fiction… particularly not when both the main character and the author obviously find it sexually arousing! Gah! Sci-fi should not have smut in it! Well, more specifically: I don’t actually mind smut in my sci-fi, but I prefer it not to be pathological smut. I like my smut consensual, thank you very much.

There’s a scene where a group of naked chained co-eds are forced to watch the gang rape, torture, and murder of a couple of their number. Then when the good guys show up, one of them – the good guys, I mean – gives a speech about how not all men are assholes and the girls had better not turn into dick-slicing lesbians who won’t give head.

WTF?! In which universe is such a speech even remotely acceptable when delivered to a room full of naked women, two or three of whom were tortured to death?!?!

Sure, I’m against militant feminists as much as any woman can be. But I’m ALSO against idiots militant masculinists. Let’s all be humanists, shall we?

I bought the next book in the series but I’m not gonna read it. Not if there’s going to be such nasty misogynistic rape-fueled sex in between super awesome action scenes. Ugh.

Other random items: ~My dog is awesome. ~G’ma made a really delicious salad thing for dinner last night, composed of a bed of iceberg, diced beefsteak tomatoes, and a mayo dressing mixed with cucumbers on top. ~I’m drinking a LOT of water today. ~I have a zit on my nose, even though I’m far too old for such nonsense. ~It doesn’t matter how much I diet and exercise, I am apparently never going to have a waist ever again. ~I’ll be sitting in with the Kings at their album release party at Sapolil‘s tasting room next Saturday night. ~My boss left a pile of mail on my desk and left town, and I’m only vaguely aware of what I’m supposed to do with it. ~I shot a roll through one of my Argus C3s this weekend and can’t wait to get it developed.

In which the sci-fi I’m reading totally fucking sucks, but I was lying in bed trying to watch a vid the other day and got irritated with the fact that I had to have my head upright in order to feel comfortable.

Being a creature from the bottom of a gravity well means that in order to think about something I must first be able to orient it. This is an awful waste of space.

I wonder what a truly 3-dimensional thought process would feel like. Not even sea creatures are free of up-versus-down.

In which it’s all good news.

Okay, so obviously none of you read, care about software, or have an iThing, so you were not in the least interested in the last post. (At least Shenry was kind enough to comment anyway.) But guess what? I have something interesting to share!

I’ve been asked to write an article about bento for the U-B! Whoo hoo! AND I may be going to a rehearsal/tryout with a new band!

Most importantly, though, the Dallas trip is only two weeks and a wake-up away. Yay, vaction! Yay, Amma!

In which I’m finally truly in love with an ebook app for my iPod Touch!

First there was this more-or-less useful app called… uh, I forget. BookShelf or something. But I paid for it, and it was what I used to read books from Baen [www.baen.com].

I found it counter-intuitive and a little wonky to use. I read a few books with it, but I couldn’t tell you what they were called or who wrote them because the interface didn’t really show me that info ever again after I’d opened a book. The page-turn function was weird and took me weeks to figure out, and over all the app was awkward to navigate. Since I’ve been using various ebook software for a decade on a variety of platforms, an app has to be pretty convoluted for me to find it hard to use.

I did most of my iTouch ebook reading in eReader [http://www.ereader.com/ereader], an app I downloaded to use with my Fictionwise [http://www.fictionwise.com] account (Fictionwise, recently purchased by Barnes & Noble, owns and operates the eReader site, and I think the app itself is a descendant of the Palm Reader).

eReader is a truly great little app, and it connects directly to one’s Fictionwise or eReader bookshelf to download new content purchased online. The interface is easy to use and makes sense.

I installed the Amazon Kindle app because it was free, and there were free books at Amazon to read with it. I’ll always take free ebooks! The app works well, but of course it only lets you read Kindle content. Not all Kindle books can be read with it, either. But it’s a solid app and every time you open it it uses your wi-fi connection to see if you’ve purchased any new content and downloads it automatically.

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